Tag: Tim Hughes

Advent, The Prologue and Relationships: 1, Jesus and the Father (John 1:1-18)

Introduction to series

For Advent this year, I want to explore one of the great Bible passages – the one that above all talks about ‘The Mystery of the Incarnation’, as it is often called in carol services.

It’s the passage we more widely call ‘The Prologue’ – but people of a certain generation must not think about Frankie Howerd and Up Pompeii when I say that!

It’s The Prologue to the Gospel According to John, the first eighteen verses of the wonderful Fourth Gospel, in which the evangelist introduces many of the themes of his Gospel in the context of Jesus’ birth.

There are so many ways we could explore this passage, for there are so many riches there. A friend of mine wrote his PhD on it, and I could easily imagine preaching every Sunday for a year on these verses.

But I’m going to resist that temptation! This is just an Advent series. And one way of exploring the Prologue over the four Sundays of Advent is to take a particular strand in it about Jesus’ relationships. So we shall look first of all at Jesus’ relationship with the Father, and in other weeks at his relationships with Moses, John the Baptist, and human beings generally.

John 1:1-18

I am not the most avid television watcher, but I did set our satellite box to record Monday night’s quiz programmes on BBC2 – Only Connect, Mastermind, and the one that goes right back to my childhood, University Challenge. That was something we used to watch as a family on Sunday lunchtimes – that and Thunderbirds.

For some reason, I still remember one starter question from an early series: ‘Which two books of the Bible begin with the same three words in English?’

Now, leaving aside the awkward issue of differing translations, the answer they wanted was Genesis and John’s Gospel, both starting with the words, ‘In the beginning.’

And that’s where we’re going today – to the beginning, to that relationship between Jesus and the Father that existed before creation and led to creation. I follow those scholars who say that the inner relationships of the Trinity are demonstrated in their actions towards human beings and the world. In the case of the Incarnation, they tell us something about why Jesus came, and that’s what we’re going to explore today.

Firstly, unity:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 

Note those words ‘with God’, ‘was God’, and ‘with God in the beginning.’ The Word, that is, Jesus, and the Father are united in fellowship and very nature. Theirs is a perfect and pure unity of relationship. They are one in heart, mind, and spirit.

It is this inner experience of unity that Jesus comes to bring at the Incarnation. It is the knowledge that human relationships with God, each other, and creation are broken that leads him to come. This is not what was intended. Humankind was made in the image of God, the One God in Three Persons who is unity, but sin has distorted and destroyed that.

So when Jesus comes, his is a mission of reconciliation. He wants human beings at one with the Godhead again. He wants human beings reconciled to each other. He wants the alienation of human beings from the creation healed.

To bring this unity will involve a great cost. It will take him from Bethlehem to Calvary, from the manger to the Cross. It makes me think of a Graham Kendrick Christmas song, ‘Thorns in the straw’, where he imagines Mary seeing the thorns for Jesus’ crown of thorns in the straw of the manger.

Therefore as Christians we remember our need to draw ever closer to our God, as we receive the forgiveness of our sins. We remember our need to work for unity with one another, putting right our broken relationships, and finding reconciliation with each other. We remember that our reconciliation with one another is one of the deeds that witnesses to our preaching about reconciliation with God.

And we remember our calling to bind up the wounds of the creation – not out of the desperation many have over things like climate change, but in the Christian hope of the God who is making all things new.

Let us remember this Advent that the unity of Father and Son leads to Jesus’ mission to bring unity. And just as that was costly for him, let us be prepared to pay a cost to proclaim and demonstrate Christ’s nature and message of unity to the world.

Secondly, love:

3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 

Jesus is the Father’s agent in creation. But what has that got to do with love?

Let me ask you a question that the famous twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth asked: was it necessary for God to create?

Barth answered that question with a ‘Yes’, and so do I. Here’s why. It’s certainly true that love between people can be personal and exclusive, but it is never private. If two people love each other exclusively but it never touches others for good, how is it so very different from mutual self-indulgence?

Take marriage as an example. The most common way in which a married couple express this love is when they are able to have children. Their personal and exclusive love naturally reaches out in a creative act and they sacrificially love their children.

Of course, I know that many couples don’t want children immediately and others cannot have children at all. So one of the things I do when I prepare a couple for marriage is I challenge them to show the love they have wonderfully discovered between themselves in service of others. Can they do something in their community? Is there a cause they could support?

I think something like that has happened on a cosmic, spiritual scale in the Godhead. Such is the love between the members of the Trinity that it has to be expressed beyond them. The Father creates through the Son and in the power of the Spirit. A universe is created beyond the Godhead for the Godhead to love.

And it is out of this love at the heart of God that Jesus comes in the Incarnation. Seeing the brokenness and lack of unity that I talked about in the first point, it is his very nature of love that brings him to earth. Remember that most basic of all statements about God in the Bible: ‘God is love.’

What I’m talking about here is what Christina Rossetti wrote about in one of her Christmas carols:

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, Love divine;
worship we our Jesus:
but wherewith for sacred sign?

There it is: Jesus comes in love because the very nature of the Godhead is love.

And Rossetti also tells us what the only fitting response is:

Love shall be our token,
love be yours and love be mine,
love to God and all the world,
love for plea and gift and sign.[1]

If the Incarnation is about the love at the heart of the Godhead coming to us in Jesus, then our response is ‘love to God and all the world’ – love God and love our neighbour, as Jesus was to say the two greatest commandments were. Even the new commandment he gave was about love: ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’

Howard Thurman, who was a great influence on Martin Luther King, wrote a short poem called ‘The Work of Christmas.’ It says this:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.

Thirdly and finally, light:

4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

At the heart of God’s life is light: purity, wholeness, righteousness, hope. But we have a world of darkness: sin, brokenness, injustice, despair. So when Jesus brings very inner character of God to Earth in the incarnation, he comes as light, the light of the world who ‘stepped down into darkness’[2].

Wherever we experience darkness, Jesus comes to shed his light. It may be the darkness when we know ourselves to be a moral failure, but the light of Jesus’ seventy-times-seven forgiving love draws us back to him again.

It may be the wounds we carry through life that leave us with low self-worth or even a sense of self-loathing, but the hope found in Jesus gives us strength to carry on.

It may be that a particular issue of injustice in the world affects us and we get involved with campaigning but nothing seems to change for the better. I listened to a talk recently by a Christian journalist whose life work it is to expose corruption in the church, but she has suffered attacks and false accusations from parts of the Christian community for her work. She has been tempted to give up, but the light of Jesus keeps her persevering for justice in the darkness.

Or maybe it’s bereavement. Six years ago when my father died, I said that a light had gone out of my life. He had modelled for me so much of what it meant to live with integrity as a Christian man in the world. Yes, he was just two months shy of his ninetieth birthday. Yes, Alzheimer’s Disease had taken his true personality before death took his body, and you could say it was a merciful release. But you know what grief is like. The logical answers don’t remove the pain.

Dad died on 1st August. It was not until Advent that year and reading John 1 that I felt a sense of hope. It was verse 5: ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it’ that made sense of things for me. Jesus gave just enough light in the darkness to take me forward in hope.

Let us begin this Advent with a sense of hope. The relationship between Jesus and his Father may seem like hi-falutin’ brain-bending stuff, but at its heart are characteristics that stretch out from the inner life of God to us through the Incarnation of Jesus. Let that unity, love, and light give us strength and hope.

[1] Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894) in Singing The Faith #210.

[2] Tim Hughes, op. cit., #175.

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Worshipping At Home

As I said yesterday, I determined that since I would be housebound today I would find other resources for worship. I’ve never been happy with Songs Of Praise because a series of hymns does not of themselves make an act of worship. Likewise, the Sunday service on Radio 4 has never connected much with me. It always contained more elements of worship, but has always felt liked a précis to me.

I thought this would be a good discipline for myself to find some worship. I also thought it would be good, given the number of elderly church members who end up being temporarily or permanently housebound and reliant on whatever the airwaves bring.

Having said that, given that I was eschewing Songs Of Praise and the Sunday Service, I was looking at other delivery methods: digital TV and Internet streaming. 

This morning, I opted for TV, knowing that most of the streamed Internet sources I’d found were from North America, and time zones meant they woulnd’t be viewable until tea-time. So, going through the ‘religion’ section on the Sky TV electronic programme guide, I avoided the obvious prosperity filth from Kenneth Copeland. Likewise, I steered clear of glossy Hillsong pep talks from Brian and Bobbie Houston, and I didn’t go near Ed Young, the man who infamously put out a video complaining about sheep-stealing pastors when he sets up new churches in an area without checking with the existing ministers.

But there was something British on UCB TV, and I opted for that. AT 10 am they were showing ‘Days Of Wonder’ from New Life Church, Hull, with Jarrod Cooper. Cooper wrote the popular worship song ‘King of kings, majesty‘, which I have found a helpful, humble and orthodox piece for services.

The opening credits showed Cooper walking (around Hull?), whilst linking the programme to the church, giving a subliminal hint that New Life Church equals Jarrod Cooper. He is the senior pastor, but I’d hope he wouldn’t want to give out a message like that. There may have been an intention to communicate something else, but I have to say that is a ‘viewer response’ reading.

Then Cooper introduced the show briefly, and I thought he said we were then going over live to worship at the church. However, that clearly wasn’t the case. We went straight into his message, which was video edited for the length of the programme.

The skeleton of his talk was fine and worthy, but I was concerned by some applications. It was a sermon about the supremacy of Christ, and although he referred to biblical passages as he went along, I didn’t hear an opening passage he was expounding. Colossians 1 would have fitted nicely. He preached about the supremacy of Christ in four areas: over the church, over creation, over wisdom, and I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the fourth point.

In supremacy over the church, he was uncontroversial but what he said needs hearing. Christ is head of the church, not the Pope, not the pastor and not the trustees.

As to supremacy over creation, this is where it all started going hyper-charismatic. He only – as I recall – illustrated this from the miraculous: the feeding of the five thousand, the translation of Philip in Acts 8 etc. He spoke of a five hour car journey taking two hours. Now I don’t have any theological problem with the miraculous, but I have a pastoral concern here about balance. I am all for expanding people’s faith – often the problem I encounter in myself and others is an insufficient level of expectation about what God can do. However, if you only accent the miraculous in talking about the supremacy of Christ over creation, you are setting up other believers for a fall, when not everything works out in the Christian paperback blockbuster way they’d hoped. Furthermore, Christ’s supremacy over creation is about ongoing issues like the upholding ogf the universe by the word of his power. I have to admit, something could have been edited out, but I was left with this concern about balance from what was shown.

When he got onto the supremacy of Christ over wisdom, I got more than concerned. Don’t misunderstand me: the basic point is both sound and important. As someone who enjoys the intellectual side of faith (but sees that as an opportunity for worship), I wholeheartedly agree that all our thinking must be submitted to Christ. Yet what we got in this section of the sermon was just some bashing of left wing stereotypes. “The feminists [they’re all the same, aren’t they?] have a problem with Ephesians,” he announced. Onto the usual stuff about headship and submission and that the male/Christ headship is based on sacrificial love. Well, yes, but what is headship? Didn’t Paul say that the great mystery he was speaking about here was about Christ and the Church, in which case he’s using an illustration from the marriage patterns of his day rather than making male headship normative? Has Cooper ever read any egalitarians? Yet he sees fit to bash them.

A little while later, he announced that “Global warming is the latest religion of the Left”. Well, apart from the sloppy language – the point is, nobody adores global warming, they are devoted to reversing climate change – I thought, oh no, he sounds like the American Christians who deny the overwhelming scientific evidence. But we shouldn’t be bothered, he said, because one day God is going to roll up this planet like a blanket. If I’d had my copy of Tom Wright‘s ‘Surprised By Hope‘ to hand, I swear I would have thrown it at the TV screen. I had hoped that British evangelical-charismatics were better informed on this one, thanks to the efforts of TEAR Fund and others, but the message isn’t getting through to some of the troops.

The service ended by cutting to brief footage of prayer ministry time at the end of the service. Cooper was praying with a man who was deaf in one ear. After prayer, the man said he could hear now in that ear. I do hope and pray that is still the case. I remain convinced that it is important we ‘show ourselves to the priests’ and offer evidence to society of healings. I do believe God heals today, but we have to think about how we present those claims.

Finally, the broadcast concluded with “Buy my CD, please!” A long commercial for Cooper’s current CD. It was no different from the adverts at the end of the Brian and Bobbie Houston or Ed Young shows, it just came with an English accent, not an Australian or American one. 

What about tonight? I watched a whole Sunday service online from Saddleback in California. I was much more favourably disposed towards this, although it wasn’t without its problems. The major issue I had with it is that – like Songs Of Praise – it really didn’t contain several critical elements of worship. The order of service went as follows:

Opening worship song
Notices – these included plugs for a church classic car event and the Saddleback Comedy Connection. Huh?
Two more worship songs 
Rick Warren‘s sermon
Post-sermon prayer
Mention of where resources were available to help with follow-up to sermon
Closing song, which didn’t seem to be for congregational participation.

What’s missing? Plenty. Let’s start with prayer. No adoration – well, you could say that was included in the songs. But no confession and assurance of forgiveness – I think that’s pastorally essential. How many people are coming to worship with burdens and need that assurance? Also, no intercession, so the church didn’t function in her priestly rôle. Finally, no Bible reading before the sermon. There were plenty of individual verses in the sermon. It was a topical sermon, rather than an expository one.

The worship songs were mainstream typical ones from the likes of Tim Hughes and Joel Houston. It was a bit liked watching a truncated version of Spring Harvest big top worship. Charismatic songs without the display of charismatic gifts. 

What about the sermon? I was much more comfortable here, even if I disagreed with the occasional comment and it was too long, around seventy-plus minutes. Worshippers get a sermon outline and it was available on the website, so that helped in following what Warren had to say. He is an engaging, warm speaker with a genuine pastoral heart. The issue was less with the seventy minutes than the seven (or eight, if you count the conclusion) points he made. There was too much to take in. Yes, again you could take it away with you, but it was a lot to work on. It was the third in a series called ‘The Jesus Model’ (what kind of model, I don’t know). This one focussed on Jesus as a model for stress management, making for a timely and relevant subject. Some will talk about ‘the curse of relevance’, but I think Warren wanted the people to apply their faith to life for it to make a difference. I took some notes ready for this blog post (and for my own personal benefit, I’d like to think), and so what follows is a summary of the thoughts that struck me from the sermon.

Warren began by referring to the new film ‘Terminator Salvation‘. The synopsis says that the grown-up John Connor. in fighting the machines as part of the resistance, has a ‘purpose-driven life’ (yes, really!) and has the weight of the world on his shoulders. However, said Warren, only one person has ever truly had the weight of the entire world on his shoulders, and that was Jesus on the cross. (Brilliant illustration! If only my people knew what Terminator was!) Because of that, he above all knows how to help us with stress.

1. Identification – know who you are. If you don’t know who you are, then society will try to label you. Don’t take your identity from brand names. (Warren meets Naomi Klein?) Don’t fall into the twin traps of either copying or comparing. He could have said a little more about our identity being in Christ as beloved children, I guess, but great start. 

2. Motivation – know who you are living for. You’ll always disappoint someone. Whoever you’re dependent upon for your happiness is your god. ‘Nobody can pressure me without my permission,’ he said – not quite sure that’s right, although I can see what he’s getting at. 

3. Vocation – know your calling. He used the familiar Saddleback SHAPE analysis to emphasise that everyone has a calling to ministry of one form or another. If you don’t clarify your calling, you’ll fall victim to the tyranny of the urgent, rather than getting on with the important. 

4. Concentration – focus on what matters most. If Satan can’t make you bad, he’ll make you busy. ‘You can fill your life with good things, or you can waste your life on good things.’ ‘This one thing I do, or these forty things I dabble in?’ ‘Is what I’m doing right now fulfilling my calling?’

5. Meditation – listen to God. A quiet time, yes, but more. Warren stresed the importance of extended silence. We have to strip away to give God a chance to speak to us. He talked about meditation as being like a worrying away at a biblical text. 

6. Collaboration – join a small group.  You were never intended to handle stress by yourself. To say you don’t need a small group is either arrogance or fear. Jesus needed a small group, and he was perfect! 

7. Recreation – take time to recharge. Sabbath-keeping is in the Ten Commandments for a reason, and remember Jesus said the Sabbath was made for humans, not the other way around. When Psalm 23 says ‘He makes me lie down in green pastures’, remember that if you don’t take sabbaths, God may well make you lie down for your own good, but it mgiht take something serious like an illness to slow you down to do it. 

His conclusion was about salvation in terms of Jesus’ invitation to take hiseasy  yoke upon us and discover that his burden is light.

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Sabbatical, Day 71, Easter Sunday: Jesus Returns To Life

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Damaris Trust Holy Week 2009, Easter …“, posted with vodpod

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! In this final Damaris Trust video for Holy Week, Krish Kandiah and Peter May talk about how Jesus’ resurrection from the dead gives us hope when considering what happens when we die.

…………

A great service for Easter Day at St Andrew’s this morning. ‘In a packed programme tonight’, as the Two Ronnies used to say, we had the Easter liturgy, renewal of baptismal vows, Holy Communion (of course) and people invited from the community to remember deceased loved ones.

In the middle of all that, there were two highlights for me. Firstly, the worship band shrank at one point to the younger members only. So Emily on vocals , Dan on guitar, Bradley on keys  and the drummer whose name I don’t know – they’re all round about thirteen years old – led us in Tim Hughes‘ ‘Happy Day‘. Here’s a version by the original artist:

Emily is a great singer, Dan a quiet and efficient bandleader, Bradley filled in subtly and the drummer guy is top drawer.

The other highlight was Lee’s sermon. Taking Mark 16:1-8, he made a virtue of the strange and sudden ending to Mark’s Gospel. He said we have to write our own ending to the Easter story in our lives. I thought that was great. 

For all that, it’s been quite a mixed day emotionally. On the one hand, I have entered Easter with a renewed confidence in the truth and importance of the Resurrection. Not that I ever lost my belief in the bodily Resurrection of Christ for one moment, but sometimes when life or circumstances aren’t the most encouraging, it can feel far away. Reading Tim Keller (sorry to mention him again!) and Tom Wright (see this excellent article from The Times yesterday) has done much to fortify my faith.

But other things have been weighing me down. My friend Will says today, in talking about his service this morning, 

Before the prayers of intercession, I reminded our congregation that for many the joys of Easter are still crowded out by their own personal Good Fridays. I know I have friends who will this week spend more time agonising in the Garden of Gethsemane (Jen and Mike, we are praying for you and Luke). For some, Easter is more like the women in Mark who hid when afraid.

And as he mentions his friends Jen, Mike and Luke, so I have been thinking about the three couples I mentioned last Sunday who have separated. Some events today have reminded me of them. Debbie and I feel such pain for them. And if that is how we feel, how do they?

More trivially, our eighteen-year-old cat is suddenly looking old, frail and weak. We are beginning to think the end might be near. The children realise, and on top of the fact that they have been asking questions about death as we’ve come through Holy Week, Good Friday and today. Mark in particular keeps asking whether he will die on a cross like Jesus.

I’m also starting to get more regular questions about how much longer the sabbatical has to go. The answer is that – with having tacked a week’s leave onto the end – I shall be back on duty four weeks today. The official Methodist literature on sabbaticals talks about planning your ‘re-entry’, which rather makes ministers feel like Apollo astronauts. The idea is that there should be a managed, phased re-introduction to active ministry.

Which makes me think of two words: ‘fat’ and ‘chance’. At least I hope it won’t be like my last sabbatical, when the superintendent asked me to come back early due to a crisis with the circuit treasurer. However, a sabbatical grants you new vision in all sorts of ways. It is then a huge challenge to share that vision with churches that are used to things being a long way different from such visions. I’ve always been a restless traveller on the outer fringes of Methodism: right now I feel somewhere out beyond Pluto.

Of course, it may just be a version of what anyone feels when a good holiday is coming to an end and they have to return to work. (Not that I’m suggesting the sabbatical is a holiday!) Time will tell.

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